Beside the Rolling Sea
by Miiko Ashida
Summary: Auron and Tidus' early years of acquaintance. Zanarkand is a mystery to one of them, a home to the other, and a future for both. Suffering and laughter, and a little growing up in between.
1. Prologue

Beside the Rolling Sea

:Prologue:

* * *

He'd heard Zanarkand called "the city that never sleeps." Standing on the docks, he could believe it: light and noise buzzed around him in a frenzied flow of energies. It was incredibly charged, the atmosphere here, but Auron sensed something about it. It was like the final throes of a clock about to wind down, to use all of its energy in a final burst of triumphant achievement. In the midst of it all, surrounded by that inevitable end of an ambiguous nature, was one small boy who he had to discover.

Tidus.

The house was not difficult to come to. Say the name "Jecht" in Zanarkand, and most blitzball fans could tell you he lived on the waterfront. Some would even know which house, and Auron was lucky enough to run across one of these. Still, the dingy structure surprised him. From Jecht's enormous fame, one would expect him to have a bit a nicer home. Instead, it was falling apart, sideboards warped by storm and wind exposure, lawn untended, riddled with weeds and a fine dusting of sand. Everything about the place suggested middle-class, if not poor.

Of course, Jecht's wife was raising her son alone now. And somehow, Auron got the feeling that his friend had never been much of a supportive husband and father anyway. Liora would doubtless be struggling to keep things together.

Feeling like an intruder, he rapped sharply on the door once. After several moments, he did it again. Perhaps no one was home. Suddenly, as he was about to try a final time, the door creaked and swung inward, revealing a three-inch stripe of tanned skin and large cyan eyes.

"Who're you?"

The boy had a child's equivalent of his father's manners, if he was indeed Jecht's son. "Is your mother here?" Auron asked, trying to sound friendly.

Withdrawing a little at the stranger's gruff voice, a head of tousled sun-bleached hair shook enthusiastically.

"When will she be home?"

Between door and frame, the visible portion of collarbone rose and fell so as to suggest a shrug. "She works at the marina," he answered.

"Are you Tidus?" Auron asked, feeling a sense of bafflement at this waiflike child, who might be the son of his best friend.

"Yeah. Who're you?"

"My name is Auron." He turned, heard the door shut. It would be best to seek out Liora now, so that he could explain things away from the boy. She might be wary of him at first, and it would not do to give that impression to Tidus. Even if he had only come here to see the boy through growing up, that would be some time. And then he would be free of his duties.

* * *

Liora was not the elegantly beautiful woman Jecht had so fondly related, but that was no surprise. Men often thought their women to be the jewels of femininity, even if they were rough and coarse as splintering wood. She wasn't _unattractive_, but there was a weariness in her, a sagging of her frame and a sadness he knew from experience. She seemed exhausted as he introduced himself, studying the lines that slung beneath her eyes and had begun to form between sepia eyebrows.

She was striking– even handsome– but not by any stretch of the imagination a stunning work of art. Blonde hair clashed with dark eyebrows, her nose too thin for such a square face. Auron could imagine that she was probably, a few years back, exactly what Jecht would find entrancing: unconventional, not so perfect as to lessen his own image, strong in a quiet way. The youthful power had not been sapped from her hands, at least; when she shook with him, he thought he was meeting Jecht a second time over. Work that had strained her spirit must have honed her physically.

"Liora," she said by way of introduction.

"Auron. I was a friend of your husband."

Her eyes flashed, brief and fascinating. "Why are you here?"

Not yet, something whispered. She would not be ready to know the truth just yet. "Jecht asked me to take care of his family, if something should ever happen to him. I...heard about the accident."

"Ah." Skeptical at first, her gaze relaxed after a moment of scrutiny. "My shift ends soon. I usually go home; would you like to come with me, and meet Tidus?"

"I believe I already have– I went by your house looking for you earlier."

"Oh! I'm sorry if he said anything to upset you," she smiled long-sufferingly, as though her son often drove away possible friends. "But, if I may ask, why did you choose to come now?"

"I just found out about Jecht."

_He died nearly a year ago,_ she wanted to say, but this Auron didn't seem to be leading her on.

"Were you two...close?"

His eyes clouded, vapidity replaced in a flash by an unfathomable smile. "In a manner."

Liora returned the gesture with a half-grin of her own, suddenly demure. Her hands fiddled with the worn hem of a working uniform. "Well...Auron. I'll finish up my shift, and then we'll go see what Tidus has to say about this– hopefully nothing he picked up at school."

"Indeed."

He nodded to her, heading out to the docks. The ocean was an unusual steel grey, stormy when the sky was cloudless. With a glance to the horizon, he silently searched for a sign that he was doing things right. There was no answering of Yevon's booming voice as in the myths; not even the last rumbles of far off-thunder graced his ears to impersonate Jecht's amiable laughter.


	2. Chapter I

Beside the Rolling Sea

:Chapter I:

* * *

The walk home seemed longer to Liora, with a heavy silence hanging between her and Auron. She'd made several attempts at conversation, but he seemed to have something on his mind. Neither spoke until she was afraid he might walk right past the house, and reminded him they were there.

"Liora," he said quietly, stopping her at the gate. "You should know, Jecht asked me only to raise the boy. If he will not have me, I fear I have wasted time for both of us."

Her eyes stared straight back at him, almost with a grim amusement. "If Tidus doesn't want you around, he'll learn to deal with it."

The folds of fabric hiding Auron's mouth twitched; it could have been either a smile or a frown. Ignoring the ambiguous gesture, she took his arm and conducted him to the door. Tidus flew out of it.

"Mother!"

"What have you been up to, Tidus?" she asked, ruffling his hair as he hugged her waist. "Scaring off visitors, again?"

One blue eye peered up at Auron, the other half of the impish face hidden, and the child drew away from his mother. "You're that man from earlier!"

"Tidus, where are your manners?" Liora laughed embarrassedly. "This is Auron. He might be staying with us awhile."

"But you said you weren't going to leave me with a babysitter!"

"He's not a babysitter– look, why don't we go inside, instead of standing here arguing for the whole street to see? Tidus, go clear off the table so we can have lunch."

Standing back from the scene, Auron took in Liora's scolding, the fatigued way she sent Tidus off with a smack, and the boy's last spurning glance back at Auron as he went, defeated, into the house. This was a world of carefully constructed order, of routine and well-established harmony, where strangers never called. Stepping into that and uprooting this half-family's last anchor seemed wrong, and he didn't know what to do.

Then with an apologetic smile, Liora tugged politely at his sleeve and led him inside. It occurred to him only in that moment that there was nothing to do but what he must–what she so openly invited him to. At least she welcomed him enough that he would have a chance, in time, to win over Tidus' trust.

* * *

Lunch was light, punctuated by awkward conversation. Liora quizzed Auron about where he had lived before, whether he was married, had he any experience with children? All very politely, of course, but it felt like the most rigorous of interrogations, and the whole time, Tidus scrutinized him with a cynical gaze. His expression was as a child's, though: completely open, and what was there to see was an ocean of hostility, and even greater pain. Auron found it difficult to focus on Liora's inquiries rather than her fascinating– if not a bit daunting– child.

"Auron was a friend of your father, Tidus," she said carefully, seeming to hope for some sort of fond recognition, or at least not the distasteful "Oh." which she got in return.

Silently, Auron observed the battle of wills between mother and child: Liora, pushing Tidus to accept a perfect stranger on faith; Tidus' natural mistrust in someone who dropped out of the blue. At last it was broken by the boy's standing, with a prominent scraping of chair legs against hardwood floors, and declaring, "I'm going to my room."

From Liora's quiet look of disapproval at the dismissive attitude, it was impossible to tell whether this signaled a victory or a concession made in the name of "retreat to fight another day". Indeed, an intriguing pair. Auron offered no sympathetic smile to Liora as the clomping footsteps of a seven-year-old's pout echoed from the hall, growing fainter. Instead, he reached out a hand, and she almost looked relieved at the cordial gesture– like he would give an equal. Her face creased into a half-crescent of congeniality; she took his outstretched hand and pressed it.

"What a relief. I worry about him sometimes, home alone all day, with no one to talk to. One has to wonder what a child gets to thinking, like that." The dogged agedness was back in her eyes, lined her brow faintly. She looked his own age, and he felt that in some respects, she was even older.

Perhaps he could allow her to reclaim something of herself. He was nothing of a nanny, but a mentor and at least guiding force he would become in the interests of her son. How odd, that what he did for Tidus really had everything to do with what he owed to the memory of a dead man and the suffering of his widow.

"I will do what I can, Liora."

"Whatever you can do places me deeply in your debt, Auron."

A moment of regarding each other, and she became distant again, offering to show him to the door (he said nothing of the fact that her house was hardly big enough to get slightly misdirected in). He agreed, and for the second time that day, they parted to leave him with the workings of a new life on his mind.

* * *

If the ramshackle house had seemed dingy, at least on the inside it carried the cheery airs of a lived-in place something of a home. His hotel room could hardly claim to clean sheets and working electricity– in the interest of expenses, he'd paid the least he could and gotten an according abode. The air had sea-must in it, though everything seemed to in Zanarkand. With a sigh, he lowered himself to a chair placed by the single, filmy window.

Outside, the sea crashed and rumbled. He could hear it in his head.

Clouds were gathering; a storm, no doubt. The two days he'd been here the city's famously benevolent weather seemed to have vanished. Perhaps it would return once the turmoil of a new resident had worn off.

Speaking of residency, it occurred to him that he had no permanent home. Liora would perhaps agree to his living with them for a time, but it would be nothing but a stress on the already tense relationship the three of them were forming. A more personal arrangement was in order, should be seen about soon.

But the day was fading into evening as he allowed memory to wash over him, like a pleasant way of drowning. Jecht, and Braska; everything he'd been so attuned to, so in love with in the moment, the glamour of life...it had all passed and become a series of whitewashed recollections. He couldn't help but wonder at the nature and purpose of all he was doing now, for the sake of a long since ineffectual past. Even what seemed like his current life would eventually be a set of memories attached to names that no longer called up roiling emotions inside him, places the color and climate of which could not be summoned up into a dream's reality at one sight or smell to reincarnate the distant past.

The sensation that took him at that thought could almost be described by something so frivolous as longing.

But he had no sense for frivolities, nor the time or taste.


End file.
